Weeding. Purging. Downsizing. Filtering….
I have stuff. Lots of it. I often have a difficult time knowing what to get rid of and what to keep.
There are complete seminars on what to keep, what to file, what to shred, when to sell something, when to give it away, and I am sure an organizing company would have a blast in my garage.
But I am not talking about old mortgage bills.
What about watercolor paintings,
and dried up flowers picked from the garden;
the crayon scribbles of a 2 year old who is growing quicker than I can bear,
a little dress they both wore too briefly,
first attempts at name-writing,
Kindergarten awards and ribbons,
a sea shell chosen specially for me and presented with sandy fingers,
a world made of construction paper and tape,
and a play-dough horse.
I have piles and boxes of child-created treasures, and non-valuables that have become valuable because of the little-girl giver.
And I’ve only been a mother for six and a half years.
She runs up to me two days ago as we are packing up to leave from our vacation with a flower in her hand. She’s picked it from the bed in front of the house we’ve made our home for a week. We might never come back here and here she is, this little-girl giver, with a piece of beauty in her hand for me. Her mother. She says something in her full-fledged, child-unfiltered emotion…
You are the best Mama in the world.
I still have this little beach bloom. It is shriveled and dead and it reminds me of the ocean, and my daughter and her open heart.
How long do I keep it before it is dust?
So many memories are tied to physical things, like newborn dresses and tiny shoes, and faded crayon drawings.
So how do I weed through it all, the piles of reminders of my babies, now so tall and big and summer-tanned. My memories fade so quickly and I forget so much.
I’ll keep some of it, I imagine, and discard the rest. And someday, when these little-girl givers are women, I’ll befriend them as adults and keep the baby-memories that are only mine.
Throw away the play-dough horse. And tell Chad he can just make another one tomorrow.
Look Annie, I took the one you insisted on making when you were here and I had it bronzed.
So don’t be knocking my love affair with play-doh!!!
Love your thoughts and so glad I found your blog. I too understand what to keep and what to throw away. Paige is at camp this week so I got a full garbage bag thrown out today. It is much easier when the kids are not at home to pitch stuff. Thanks for sharing. Somehow I deleted my previous post.
I think Cindy Morgan has an old song that says that the most valuable things in life are the memories we make along the way.
Shauna’s mom actually kept every single test and assignment she ever completed. Boxes and boxes of the stuff. We boiled it down to one (probably still too much) and hucked the rest.
Can you imagine in my house times 6?
I take photos of artwork, or special toys etc. and we keep only the best and few and far between.
The photos still evoke those memories behind it.
I was directed to your site from Annie’s blog. I’ve been reading for a while and love your insights on being a mom.
I have two teenagers; a daughter who is 19 and in college (home for the summer) and a son who is 16 and will be a senior in our homeschool this year. I also have a 6 year old son. I kept so many memories from year to year that I almost moved us out of our house because there was no room.
When my oldest was a senior, she decided to go through her keepsakes and start tossing them! (This from a girl, who at 5 years old, saved pine straw from her grandmother’s yard when there was the possibility of my parents moving out of state. She kept the straw and used kleenexes that she cried into each night under her bed. Anyway, when she started dejunking I realized I was having a harder time than her. That’s when I knew I should have thrown more out and left more room for us to just live!
With my younger son, who is also a pack rat, I am determined to take more pictures of treasures and toss more out. Even if you don’t scrapbook them, you can keep them in a memory box for those days when they’re out on their own and you want to bring back those baby/childhood memories.
That was long. Sorry.
Renee
I am by nature not a saver. I try to save some things because my kids, especially Morgan tend to hang on to every little treasure. I do take pictures of bigger projects and things so I don’t have to keep those. I have a tub that I place special projects in and she can decided later if she wants them or not. There are a few things that I have attached special meaning to that I will keep but I do carry a little guilt at times for not saving every little thing but the practical reality of organization and storage eventually overtake the feels of guilt.
I get pictures from my girls about every. day. I’m sad that most of them end up in the trash, but hey, I’ll get another one tomorrow!
(found you thru Theresa’s blog. Love me my Cindy Beall)
Yesterday Matty found some of his papers in the trash and FREAKED OUT. They are precious, but it is so hard to keep it all. Maybe blogging will help us hold onto some of these memories, too?
My mom keeps everything that we ever gave her – all the old poems I used to write her and the list goes on and on. She even has my wedding dress hanging in one of the closets at their house (I’m sure she’d like me to remove that, though).
Because you can’t save EVERYTHING, maybe you could start taking pictures of every little treasure your girls give you and make a little photo album / scrap book…this you could keep forever and reopen whenever you feel the need to reminisce.
only mine, yes.
today again i want a daughter.
oh the roller-coaster you send me on.
it’s becoming clear to me that my potential for future motherhood rests in your typing hands.
I have my two wonderful teenagers. I picked two seperate color expando file folder and for every year we keep stuff. We go through their treasures together and decide what they want to keep. The files are usually legal size and expand 3-4 inches with a fold over flap. They store great. There are the exceptions like the paper mache worlds that don’t fit in their files that we keep. I have a big box and every year we add their treasures file. It can be stuff from school, church or home. I have one child that saves all of his book reports while my daughter keeps flowers. As excited as I am about the grades on spelling tests it gets way to overwhelming to keep them all.
I have the same struggle – what to keep, what to let go…..I have to admit that I am a better keeper than let-goer…..
I have to be totally emotionally prepared to get rid of anything…… while my husband tosses all sorts of memoirs. He has learned to trash things when I am out of town, because I will always go through the trash and remove many, many special items!
I so struggle with what to keep and what to throw away…especially the school papers…aack!